Release Date: December 29, 2004
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, John Travolta, Gabriel Macht, Deborah Kara Unger
Directed by: Shainee Gabel
Written by: Shainee Gabel
Distributed by: Lions Gate Films
MPAA Rating: R (language including some sexual references)
That fable about the tortoise and the hare is a bunch of hogwash -- no way does the tortoise win -- but the reason people remember it (and the reason it’s a fable) is because life keeps providing metaphoric excuses to invoke it. The latest is Scarlett Johansson, whose unfettered ascendancy among a sea of young actresses who are either talentless or tabloid fodder has not been glamorous or sudden but merely consistent. Ten years from now, the things people say about her will be much kinder than what they say about Hilary Duff or Lindsay Lohan.
The reason is because she stars in movies like A Love Song for Bobby Long, which, though it is not spectacular or even good, is unusual. Like some of Johnasson’s other lesser-seen movies, such as Girl With a Pearl Earring, it deviates from the teen genre enough to suggest that Johnasson is more concerned with the lateral boundaries of her range than the vertical ones. It is one thing to be good at making one kind of movie. But it is a different and much better thing altogether to be good at making several kinds.
A Love Song for Bobby Long, which is written and directed by Shainee Gabel and adapted from Ronald Everett Capps’s novel, pairs Johnasson with John Travolta, who is in something like his third or fourth comeback stage here, and with Gabriel Macht, who, if he wants to make a comeback, still needs to find a career he can screw up in the first place. She is thus in the extraordinarily unlikely position of being the best actor in the movie, which, though it looks good for her, is not so good for the film: She is cast in support of Travolta and Macht, both of whom take too much time to warm up.
Travolta plays Bobby Long, a former Auburn University English professor who is now a washed-up drunk living in a dilapidated New Orleans house with his protégé, a writer named Lawson Pines (Macht). The house actually belongs to the dead mother of Pursy Will (Johansson) -- Bobby attends her funeral in the opening scene -- and so, with no place else to go after her mother dies, Pursy grudgingly moves in with Bobby and Lawson.
Most of the rest of the film is your run-of-the-mill coming-of-age story, paired with an odd-couple angle and given literary highlights: the young, impetuous, impulsive student character initially butts heads with the older, wiser, washed-up teacher character before coming to an understanding. From the moment Bobby Long makes his entrance, we know he’s wiser than his alcohol-soaked demeanor lets on, and the belated way in which Pursy eventually comes to this conclusion as well is somewhat routine. A lot of the time this seems like a deep-fried version of Finding Forrester.
Like Forrester, Bobby Long is one of those movies where every character has secrets, and the gradual revelation of these secrets adds unexpected depth to the characters. At first Travolta’s portrayal of Bobby plays like a hammed-up version of the Arkansas politician he did in Primary Colors, but he hits his stride in the second and third acts as other characters reveal more details about him (such as the reason why he stopped teaching and started drinking, which I will not reveal here since it is an important part of the plot; likewise for the final major plot development, near the very end). Lawson and Pursy become fuller as well, feeling their way around a tentative romance that is complicated by Lawson’s no-strings-attached involvement with a local barmaid played by Deborah Kara Unger.
Pursy, however, remains the simplest of the three main characters, so Bobby Long is a good chance to watch Johansson work, putting subtle inflections into an otherwise underwritten character the way a good actor will. Johansson grew up New York City, but she has the Louisiana accent down. She develops a set of character tics and sticks ruthlessly to them (her reaction to unsettling second-act news is to grab a jar of peanut butter and a bag of candy and start eating). She has a quiet demeanor, but her wide, green eyes are sharp, and you can see that she is devouring all of the scenery and people around her. She transforms Pursy from a cliché into a real person.
It probably helps that Johansson is in a coming-of-age movie as she is coming of age herself, and also that most young actors look good in coming-of-age movies, regardless of their own talent. But unlike, for example, Rob Brown, who played the young, impetuous, impulsive student character in Finding Forrester, Johansson will still be around long after she has come of age -- even if she has to (or maybe because she did) make movies like A Love Song for Bobby Long in the process.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)